Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
DOVER TOWNSHIP -- To managers at Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corp., the study results were good news. But to past and present employees of the chemical company, the study that found cancer death rates of Ciba workers are no higher than those for the general population was too good to be true.
Former employees who say they have seen many co-workers succumb to cancer said last week that they believe the study's methodology was flawed.
"I can't honestly sit here and say I'm happy with the report," said John Talty, a 37-year Ciba employee who is former president of local 8-562 of the plant's Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. "I'm not surprised with the report. They're (Ciba) not in the business of hiring expensive companies to give them bad news."
Union President Bill Webb, said who has worked at Ciba for 38 years, agreed with Talty.
"I personally think it's faulted," he said of the study, which reviewed mortality rates of 3,266 former Ciba workers who were employed at the plant from 1952 to 1995. "Basically it's a mortality study. It does not cover the people who have gotten cancer since 1995, or the ones who had it but are now in remission."
For years, union officials had asked the company to consider conducting an incident study, which would include former employees who contracted cancer but may have recovered from the disease. Company officials chose to proceed with the mortality study, which only includes employees who have died.
Toms River site manager Eugene W. Gessler said last week that the company has not ruled out conducting a more in-depth study. But Gessler noted that since so few people remain employed at the plant, which ceased most operations in December 1996, company officials have questioned what could be gained by conducting another study.
Linda L. Gillick, who heads the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, said she also supports a more in-depth incident study.
"We're more interested in how many people have been affected than how many have died," Gillick said. "The death rate is not going to be indicative of the actual rate of cancer."
Only about 40 employees remain at Ciba, where industrial dyes and additives for plastics were once manufactured. Ciba was once the county's largest employer, but now the only employees who remain are involved in an ongoing ground water and site clean-up.
Ciba's dye plant was placed on the federal Superfund list of hazardous waste sites in 1982. The EPA has estimated that about 51,000 drums of chemical wastes, including many carcinogens, were dumped on the property, many in unlined landfills.
Results of the study were mailed to more than 2,500 surviving employees late last week. The epidemiological study was conducted by Drs. Elizabeth Delzell and Nalini Sathiakumar of the Department of Epidemiology of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Ciba paid $320,000 for the 18-month study, which was a follow-up to three previous reviews of the health of former Ciba employees. The latest study confirms previous findings that the overall health of former workers is actually better than that of the general population of New Jersey and the nation, researchers said.
There were 225 deaths from all types of cancers among the former employees studied, slightly lower than the 232 cancer deaths that would be expected when comparing the workers with the population as a whole.
The researchers did find an increase in cancer fatalities among 89 Ciba workers who were previously employed at the Cincinnati Chemical Works. The employees came to Toms River after the Cincinnati plant shut down in 1959.
Delzell said former Cincinnati employees had higher than expected death rates from bladder cancer, which has been linked to exposure to benzidine and beta-napthylamine, two chemicals used in the manufacture of dyes, tires and rubber.
Benzidine was used at the Toms River plant but was not manufactured there. It was manufactured at the Cincinnati facility.
Talty said he can not believe that Ciba workers are healthier than people who never worked at the company.
"I think it's ridiculous to say that people working 25 to 30 years at Ciba-Geigy are healthier basically than people in the general population," Talty said. "Many Ciba workers were exposed to various chemicals on a daily basis."
Talty's brother Raymond, who worked at the plant for 35 years, said former employees still believe an inci-dent study would produce a different result.
"I know a lot of people who have cancer now, and they're not part of the study because they're still alive," he said. "We feel that since 1995 there have been quite a few people who have died of cancer and most of them are not that old."
The Taltys and Webb also pointed to several sections of the report that not-ed there were higher than expected cancer death rates in various areas of the plant. In the South Dyes and Main-tenance areas, for example, research-ers found more lung cancer deaths than expected among white males. And in the North Dyes area, more higher than expected central nervous system and stomach cancer deaths were found.
Delzell said that none of the higher than expected cancer death rates could be conclusively linked to working at Ci-ba. For example, lung cancer death rates were higher for workers who were employed at the plant for shorter periods, while workers who worked at the plant for more years had lower death rates.
She also said central nervous system cancers have never been linked to the types of chemicals workers would have been exposed to at the North Dyes ar-ea.
But those statements are not reassuring to current and former employees.
"There was a lot of stuff people were exposed to at North Dyes that was dangerous," John Talty said. "A lot of these things people were working with were carcinogens or suspected carcinogens."
Raymond Talty agreed.
"We understood it was a chemical plant," he said. "It's not to say there weren't safety precautions, but, as we always were told, 'This is no ice cream factory.' "
Published: July 5, 1998
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